Disk Images and Version Control

[Paul Fox]

joshua n pritikin wrote:
 > On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 01:45:21AM -0400, Michael Stone wrote:
 > >  * provide root access on some Linux host(s)  (or take great care with
 > >    fakeroot / qemu configuration) to allow others to work on the 
 > >    filesystem without screwing up file ownership and permissions
 > 
 > If you use GIT, you need to be extra careful here because GIT doesn't 
 > record ownership or permissions.

perhaps i'm misunderstanding michael's proposal (since i'm not
familiar with the build system as it exists), but in my
experience, closely tying the shape of the filesystem structure
on the target to the shape of the filesystem structure on the
build host isn't productive.  it's okay to maintain minor
sub-trees in an iso-morphic manner, but the step of populating
the target filesystem(s) from the host sources should really be
managed by some sort of scripted bill-of-materials, so that
ownership, permissions, and even changes of filename or location
can be managed in a scalable way, without causing unnecessary
churn in the source control system -- only the BOM changes.  (it
becomes more obvious that this is necessary when you introduce
the second generation of a product, which share most, but not
all, of the original product's filesystem properties.)

paul
=---------------------
 paul fox, pgf at foxharp.boston.ma.us (arlington, ma, where it's 74.1 degrees)